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EARL McRAE, QMI Agency

Dec 12, 2010

, Last Updated: 1:30 AM ET

“The team doesn’t need him the way he is playing now.”

Alex Kovalev’s general manager

No, not Bryan Murray. Bob Gainey. The then-GM of the Montreal Canadiens spoke those words to the media in February 2009. He was referring to a man with more letters in his name than the alphabet — Alexei Vyacheslavovich Kovalev — who no one would deny then, or now, comes with skills wrapped in dreams that many a player aspires to but seldom realizes.

Bryan Murray and Cory Clouston are experiencing with Kovalev what Gainey and his head coach Guy Carbonneau did, the difference being that Gainey’s frustration over the Russian’s severe bouts of lethargy hit such an epic level that he enacted what is arguably unheard of in pro sports, even with players who are the worst of the worst:

He ordered Kovalev to his Montreal house for a week, told him he’s not playing.

“Alex’s preference was to stay with the team,” Gainey told the media. Followed by the foreboding words: “I could see in his eyes that he agreed with it.” Meaning Kovalev’s house arrest on a charge and conviction of unwarranted lethargy.

In other words Gainey accused Kovalev of deceitfulness: His voice saying one thing, his eyes giving away the truth — that rather than suck it up for the team and play to expectations, Kovalev was fine with being sent home.

Kovalev didn’t seem to catch the negative irony when he angrily unloaded on the Ottawa hockey reporters the other day that he can’t understand why he’s being picked upon by Clouston, and that “it’s been happening my whole career, I accept that.”

Along with the bizarre utterance “why don’t they just let me play like I can ... I don’t know if it’s some kind of jealousy or something else.”

One is left to infer that Kovalev thinks there’s a conspiracy engineered by Clouston to actually prevent him playing “like I can,” with the reason being Clouston is “jealous.”

Of what? Clouston punishing him because he’s jealous of his ability, when he decides to show it, to make the team better and Clouston’s job more secure? Clouston punishing him because he’s jealous of his narrow nose? His hairstyle? His abs? His fluency in Russian? His height?

Should Murray and Clouston ever reach a decision to send Kovalev home for a week, they might want to consider instead sending him to the Royal Ottawa for a year.

Kovalev is a fine person, likeable, caring, but like many highly-talented artistes, seemingly beset by an inferiority-complex coupled with paranoia found especially in Russians, and that grips him too frequently in the clamps of: “Do I deserve what I’ve achieved? Do I deserve what I have? Am I as good as they think I am?” And if the mind is the motor of the body, severely suppresses his offerings.

He isn’t the first “superstar” in hockey with similar fragilities and apathies that drove GMs and coaches crazy, a famous example the brilliantly-talented Frank Mahovlich of the Maple Leafs who could do it all when he wanted, but didn’t want to enough, the coda of opposing teams being: “Don’t wake up the Big M.”

Or maybe — who really knows? — the Kovalev who once could do it all, but increasingly never as much, is simply at the age of 37, shot, his injuries a factor, along with the human reality that we all age at different rates; one person’s 37 is another person’s 47.

Alex Kovalev was the first Russian ever to be selected in the first round of an NHL entry draft — 15th in 1991 — and of the 14 players ahead of him (10 of them forwards) in that conscription 19 years ago, 13 are retired from the NHL, and hockey.

Brian Rolston, 37, left winger, New Jersey Devils, 11th pick in the draft, is the only survivor among those above Alex Kovalev whose bell tolls speculatively: I’m not as good as I once was, but maybe if I want, maybe not, I’ll be as good once as I ever was.